Congestion and overload reduction
A gateway server situated between a radio access network and a core network is disclosed that includes a radio access network packet interface, a load management module for monitoring load of a management server in the core network coupled to the radio access network packet interface, a packet forwarding module for forwarding requests to the management server coupled to the load management module, and a local packet core module coupled to the load management module and the packet forwarding module, the local packet core module being configured to respond to a mobile device, when an overload is detected at the management server, with a management server message requesting that the mobile device try again at a later time.
1. A method, comprising:
determining, at a signaling node in communication with a radio access network providing access to and with a core network, an elevated load state for a core network node based on a count of messages received during a first interval at a base station for a plurality of user equipments (UEs);
retaining, at the signaling node, state of at least one UE of the plurality of UEs and of the core network management server for a stateful filtering process configured to identify spurious signaling messages from the at least one UE during the elevated load state of the core network node;
caching, at the signaling node, prioritization policies pertaining to the at least one UE;
receiving, at the signaling node, a request from the at least one UE for services at the core network node;
throttling or dropping the request based on a throttle mode based on the elevated load state and the retained state; and
monitoring, at the signaling node, the load state of the core network node to determine when the core network node exits the throttle mode.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the request is an attach request from a user equipment (UE) to connect to a mobility management entity (MME) in a long term evolution (LTE) core network, and the core network node is the MME.
3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising entering the throttle mode when the load state exceeds a threshold set based on a line rate of a communications channel between the base station and the core network node or processing throughput estimate at the core network node.
4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising entering or exiting the throttle mode upon receiving a S1AP overload control message from the core network node.
5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the count of messages is an overall received message count from the plurality of UEs of messages that are being sent to the core network node.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the count of messages is a count of success messages from the core network node to the radio access network.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein throttling further comprises sending, to the at least one UE, a rejection message and a request to reattempt after a configurable time period.
8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining whether to drop, provide service to, or provide degraded service to the request.
9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining at the base station whether to send the at least one UE to another radio access network node or radio access technology.
10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the base station is a multi-radio access technology (multi-RAT) base station and provides radio access according to at least two of 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, Wi-Fi or WiMax protocol.
11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
receiving, at the signaling node, authentication information from a security server in the core network;
caching authentication information; and
authenticating the at least one UE prior to providing access to core network devices.
12. The method of claim 1 , further comprising entering the throttle mode based on the load state and a priority of the request.
13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising entering the throttle mode based on the load state and a source equipment identifier of the at least one UE in the request.
14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the source equipment identifier is either an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) or international mobile equipment identifier (IMEI) on a priority equipment list or in a range of priority equipment identifiers.
15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising entering the throttle mode based on the load state and a roaming status of the at least one UE.
16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the stateful filtering process performs filtering using a combination of two or more of: international mobile equipment identifier (IMEI), international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI), IP address, IP port, protocol type, security status, encryption status, general packet radio service tunneling protocol (GTP) tunnel status.
17. The method of claim 1 , further comprising detecting a rogue UE or a rogue application, and rejecting messages from the rogue UE or the rogue application via the stateful filtering process.
18. The method of claim 1 , where in the plurality of UEs include mobile devices, machine to machine (M2M) devices, Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
19. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing second stage filtering at a coordinating node situated between the base station and the core network node.